All The Monitor Breakfast

Future presidents are unlikely to undo the Obama administration's controversial rule to cut carbon emissions from power plants, even if they want to, presidential counselor John Podesta said Friday. Why not?

Obama counselor John Podesta said Friday the US has ways to monitor the five former Taliban officials released in the swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. He also offered a succinct assessment of what a Hillary Clinton presidency would look like.

'We're committed to getting this done,' the White House's John Podesta said Friday of a new EPA proposal to limit carbon emissions from power plants. A business report showing a hit to the US economy contained 'fantasy job loss numbers,' he said.

The GOP-led House is forming a select committee on the Benghazi tragedy because 'continuing to focus obsessively on repealing the Affordable Care Act has lost its luster,' Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the DNC, said this week.

At a time when Congress is 'universally despised,' the climate for Election 2014 could be especially unfavorable for incumbents, more than anti-Democrat or anti-Republican, Celinda Lake of the bipartisan Battleground Poll said March 25.

GOP Rep. Dave Camp wants his recently unveiled tax reform plan to bring simplicity to a US tax code that is '10 times the size of the Bible with none of the good news.' It won't get traction this election year, but it starts the conversation.

The White House didn't like the recent Congressional Budget Office report showing that a $10 minimum wage would cost the economy 500,000 jobs. Director Douglas Elmendorf defends both the report and the CBO's work in hyperpartisan times.

A number of economists from the White House and beyond have criticized a CBO report on the effects of potentially boosting the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. But CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf isn’t backing off.